Elves aren’t the only small, humanoid creatures that are all a-bustle this holiday season. Yours truly (more hobbit than elf, to be honest) has also been a busy bee-ver (a strange concept for a hybrid animal, but I don’t really give a dam). Let’s pick out some of this month’s highlights:

My retrospective review of Tomorrow Corporation’s Little Inferno went live on HTMLGIANT this morning. If you haven’t had a chance to play the game, it’s currently on sale in a variety of digital marketplaces, including the pay-as-you-wish Humble Bundle, so your excuse for not trying one of indie gaming’s most blistering satires is undeniably insufficient.

In case you missed it, this is my second HTMLGIANT review of the month. The first was of Daniel S. Muehlmeier’s art object/board game CENTERPIECE, the subject of a failed and widely mocked Kickstarter project. I’m not sure why the campaign failed, to be honest; I was hooked from the moment I first clicked on the video (it has certain mesmeric qualities). Though the Kickstarter failed, you can still order copies of Daniel’s game on ebay.

You might remember that last month, my wife Heather started her own blog, JUMPSCARES, chronicling our late-night delves into Netflix’s horror library. Well, she was kind enough to let me write a guest post in review of Satan’s Little Helper, a cheeky indie horror comedy she refused to touch. She’s also got a review up, as of a few days ago, of Pontypool, a surprise hit suggested to us by Netflix Max. You should really check it out (the film and the review).

Finally, I haven’t given up on my Sexy WIPs…just slowed down the pace a bit. If you’ve been following this blog, you will already have seen the first two installments of Fatal Purr, my overproduced animatronic horror stage musical, written during my and Heather’s honeymoon. There’s also a little Xmas surprise coming at the end of the month. And I’ve added some licensing information to the About page, since I am now officially publishing my own creative content on the blog…basically, feel free to share, reblog, retweet, or remix anything you find here, as long as you link back to The Year is Yesterday and you don’t make money off of it (to obtain permission for commercial use, feel free to contact me personally).

So as you can see, I’ve been working hard this…oh crap, it’s only 2 days until Christmas?! OMGBRB

Postscript: My newest roundup of Kickstarter projects for NerdSpan just went live as well. Check it out!

How do you know you’ve hit the big leagues? I don’t know, maybe when there are fucking giants involved? At least that’s how I feel when, all breathless and with a gut full of lepidopterans, I find one of my articles published on the awesomely cool HTMLGIANT. It’s a bit of a review, a bit of a criticism, and a bit of a confession, all centered around the question: how far can we possibly push storytelling in video games? Is there a point where we become limited, not by the technology or the medium, but by the personalities of the players themselves? Do those players (myself included) actually want the kinds of stories they keep clamoring for? Find out–well, one person’s heartfelt take, at least–in Mass Effect and the Self-Imposed Strictures of Interactive Storytelling.

My wife of 10 years, Heather Campbell, has begun tapping into her own writerly spirit with jumpscares, a WordPress blog dedicated to the horrific gems buried in the Netflix instant streaming catalog. I couldn’t think of a better calling for somebody who spends as much time on Netflix as we do (she’s as mad about movies as I am goofy for games), and she plans to update it with weekly reviews and other features. To date, jumpscares has covered three streaming delights: the off-the-wall Twin Peaks pilot episode, the surreal psychological horror of YELLOWBRICKROAD, and the quirky cult slasher flick with a too-strong moral compass, Sleepaway Camp 2. She’s also finally hopped aboard the Twitter train (follow her @lurking_horrors).

I continue to preside over the Geek Haven, a.k.a. Kickstarter’s projects in the game-o-sphere, with a monthly, curated view of what I see as the best of the best. This month, that included the insanely overfunded Night in the Woods, for which I didn’t see the appeal until I clicked on the video myself. It also includes Dino Run 2, a dream project that, if it doesn’t hit its funding goal, will make me cry dinosaurian tears; Touch Board, a very cool tech project with real-world gaming applications; and more of my usual mix of electronic and tabletop games. Check out November’s Geek Haven: Dark Woods, Paleolithic Paths and Gaming Paint.

and some microfiction for you:

My old professor tended a garden of nocturnal daylilies. He was a peculiar sort: every evening, he retired into his night-garden, recited Shakespeare by the blue light of the mosquito lamp.

His garden was something of a legend among students. He offered guided tours, without appointment, on weekends, but by morning the blooms were already beginning to close. Only four students had witnessed the flowers in their full splendor, inhaled their moony fragrance, but they were strangely reticent about the how they had come upon the professor’s garden at night. A heavy price was whispered.